While laying out his general vision for a better world, Obama touched on specifics including the vital need to combat climate change by building on the accord reached in Paris last December and the duty of the wealthiest countries to help poorer nations leapfrog destructive forms of energy.
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US President Barack Obama on Tuesday said the worldwide order has been so successful that China and India remain on a path of “remarkable growth”, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reports. “I believe this thinking is wrong”.
Obama adds that without evolving in the direction of democracy, people’s expectations will go unmet, suppression and stagnation will set in and strongmen will be left to crack down on their societies or scapegoat enemies, leading to war.
Condemning Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump, who he never mentioned by name, he took apart policies on trade, immigration and multiculturalism.
“Our country has been weak”.
“A country ringed by walls would only imprison itself”, Obama said.
In his address to the General Assembly, Obama also urged nations to follow through on their pledges “even when the politics are hard”.
“We are here because right now in crowded camps in cities around the world there are families from Darfur in Chad, Palestinians in Lebanon, Afghans in Pakistan, Colombians in Ecuador, who’ve endured years, in some cases, decades, as refugees surviving on rations and aid and who dream of someday, somehow, having a home of their own”, the president said.
– Save the Children, which provides education, emergency aid and health care to young people inside Syria and in neighboring countries.
“We are facing a crisis of epic proportion”, Mr Obama said.
And even as a Syrian ceasefire brokered by Washington lay in tatters, Obama insisted diplomacy – not force – is the only way to end the brutal five-year conflict.
Yet, he said that people are losing trust in institutions, which makes governing more hard. “They are powerful. They reflect dissatisfaction among too many of our citizens”. Obama’s longstanding differences with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his actions in Ukraine have accompanied intense disagreement over Syria’s future and a series of failed attempts by Russia and the U.S.to resolve the civil war there together.
Mr Obama used his eighth and final United Nations address as president to call for a “course correction” to ensure that extremism and violence does not drive countries into a more divided world.
Obama arrived at the White House in 2009 to find America’s reputation tattered by the war in Iraq and George W Bush’s distain for global forums.
Though he never directly addressed the USA presidential election, Obama’s message for the General Assembly was in many ways applicable to the impulses raging in the race, citing “a contest between authoritarianism and democracy right now” and an appeal for a top-down “strongman model”.
Both Ban and Obama were making their final speeches at the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.
The secretary-general’s second five-year term ends December 31.
“He hailed India’s economic growth saying China and India remain on a path of remarkable growth.Obama said the world is by many measures less violent and more prosperous than ever before”.
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We are all stakeholders in this worldwide system, and it calls upon all of us to invest in the success of institutions to which we belong.
